Computer Laboratory > Teaching > Course material 2008–09 > Comparative Architectures

Comparative Architectures
2008–09

Principal lecturer: Dr Robert Mullins
Taken by: Part II
Syllabus
Past exam questions

Introduction

This course provides an introduction to contemporary microprocessor design. It describes how it has been possible to translate advances in CMOS fabrication technology into spectacular improvements in microprocessor performance. The course investigates and contrasts the key architectural techniques that have been exploited over the past 30 years. Looking forward, we discuss the limits of uniprocessor performance and the challenges industry and academia currently face in making the transition to parallel computing.

Lectures and Supervisions

Complete set of lecture notes (PDF)
Supervision Worksheet (PDF)

Remember that you are certainly not required to read and understand all of the additional material provided. Although, it may help you understand some aspects of the course better or enable you to explore a topic you find particularly interesting.

	Lectures	Slides	Add. material	Errata
1	Introduction	PDF	Extra
2	The Instruction Set Architecture (ISA)	PDF	Papers
3	Fundamentals of computer design	PDF	Extra
4	Advanced pipelining - Implementation issues and limits	PDF	Extra
5	Advanced pipelining - Branches	PDF	Extra	Slides 4, 5, 28
6	Superscalar techniques I	PDF	Extra material for 6&7
7	Superscalar techniques II	PDF	(see above)
8	Software approaches to exploiting ILP	PDF (updated)	Extra	improved slides
9	Multithreaded processors	PDF	Extra
10	The memory hierarchy - Cache memories	PDF	Extra
11	The memory hierarchy - Cache optimisations	PDF	Extra
12	The memory hierarchy - Main memory	PDF	Extra
13	Vector processors	PDF	Extra
14	Chip multiprocessors	PDF (updated)	Extra
15	Special-purpose architectures	PDF	Extra

Lecture 16 - Guest Lecture given by Krisztián Flautner (VP of Research and Development at ARM)
Breakfast (coffee and croissants) will be available from 9.45am.
I will also announce the winner of the branch predictor competition at this lecture.

Lecture notes and additional material from previous years: 2006/07 (Dr. David Greaves) / 2004/05 (Dr. Ian Pratt)

Branch Predictor Competition

Rules and branch traces for development

Errata

Please let me know if you spot an error in the lecture notes (Robert.Mullins@cl.cam.ac.uk)

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Comparative Architectures2008–09